CAM.
(Skip this post for pictures below~!)This is my stand on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM): written as a reply to someone else's post. I take a moderate stand such that while I believe patients should be given the freedom to pursue it, they must still be primarily under the care of regular doctors, and I still strongly believe in the doctrines and methods of medical science.
alright let me put this upfront as well - the point of me commenting is that i strongly believe that, as future doctors and scientists, we cannot afford to be outwardly hostile towards CAM, regardless of our personal beliefs. that is because we want our future patients to tell us honestly what sorts of CAM they have since used and are intending to use, and we do not want them to conceal such important information out of fear of being ridiculed, or simply distrust us altogether because the alternative practitioner sounds nicer and more convincing.
when i say 'uproot', i mean 'to remove completely from society'. has evidence-based medicine successfully done that? no - and i believe that it is because, as you and me know too well, there are too many things traditional scientific medicine does not know and cannot do. we do not know the cause of, let alone a definitive treatment for, devastating yet relatively common problems such as fibromyalgia (some people even suggest that this problem does not exist physiologically). and seemingly simple problems, such as a UTI, can develop into sepsis and become fatal. this provides a gap for alternative medicine to exist - unless traditional scientific medicine is able to solve everyone's problems, it is not going to remove alternative medicine, whether or not alternative medicine is effective or not.
well - it is your choice to be annoyed. however - note that it is because of your training and beliefs (okay it is also mine :P) that cause you to strongly think that qi and acupoints do not exist, and homeopathy does not make sense. traditional chinese practitioners are trained to believe that these things exist - from their perspectives, these things are real and this is how they view the human body. for proper practitioners, their intentions are not to trick you into believing something 'unreal' - what they want is to cure you using methods which they are convinced to work.
what patients are the most concerned about is whether a method works, and they will try any method that gives them confidence. we should see ourselves as a strong competitor of CAM - as long as patients have confidence in us, they will trust us and cooperate with us in terms of treatment. if a patient wants to try acupuncture to help with her arthritis, we should warn her of possible side effects and the absence of scientific evidence, remind her to adhere to her drug schedule and appointments, give her recommendations if possible, and leave the decision to her. as long as a procedure is safe, and the patient feels convinced that she should try it, she should have the freedom to pursue it as long as we are kept informed.
yes, i agree that CAM practitioners should be regulated, and should not be allowed to make claims suggesting that their methods are 'scientifically proven' while in fact they're not. this is up to the FDA to come out with something (in fact it has). but as long as they do not harm patients, i don't see anything wrong in letting them say that they might help with certain problems. the writer in the BCA lawsuit is appealing based on 'freedom of speech' - this is an interesting position to have...!
also, yes, placebos sometimes do cost a lot of money, and in the end it is not likely to work. but if the placebo gives the patient some form of hope and psychological well-being, and is not known to have adverse health effects, i believe that patients should be given the freedom to pursue it while being monitored by a doctor.
sometimes, even traditional scientific medicine functions this way. the point of palliative care for late-stage cancer patients is to do something to try to relieve symptoms even though it might not make a difference in the end. i have a case like that now, and my parents depend on me to decide what to do - i am advising them to put the patient's quality of life at highest priority and to do anything to maintain that, while i know anything would simply be an 'ineffective placebo' towards the disease. similarly, some forms of CAM, such as qi gong and reiki, can also help to give patients a sense of well-being and improve their quality of life.
well, do you know NCCAM (a branch of NIH) classifies prayer as a form of CAM too?
Labels: Policy and Politics, Random
